their hands over their eyes to get a better view. An older, gray-haired woman in a suit jacket and skirt was hurling orders and pointing inside. When one boy headed for the steps, she yanked him back by the collar of his navy blue school uniform. Josh’s gaze went to the other exit.
“Where are you?” He pushed the knit cap back from his forehead and glanced at the car and the fire that continued to burn bright and hot. He turned his attention back to the school and debated rounding the building and entering through the back. But that would serve no purpose. He was well aware that a face-to-face encounter, especially now, would have her running. He’d come too far to lose her.
“Come on,” he encouraged his absent quarry. He wondered how she’d managed to survive as long as she had. From what he could see she had only a rudimentary knowledge of the art of disappearing and a bucket of pure luck. That was about to change.
“Daniel!”
It was a woman’s voice, clear with a sweet edge despite the shock that so obviously laced through the words.
“There you are,” he said under his breath. She had changed her name, her nationality and her look, but he would know her anywhere. Her hair was now a pallid blond contained in an elegant updo that he recognized as an attempt to add years to her youthful face. But even at a distance he would recognize those eyes and those cheekbones. He’d studied that face for hours, memorized it as he did for every job. Except this time he had wanted to know so many other things, such as what her voice sounded like. Now he knew.
Her gaze seemed to fix on the scene. He inched closer.
A movement out of the corner of his eye had him turning, and as he did he saw that one of the children had broken from the cluster and was moving much too close to the vehicle.
“Damn it,” he swore. The flames were licking at the vehicle and there was no way of knowing if the gas tank had gone with the first explosion. He moved fast, forgetting about keeping to the fringes or keeping his head low. He grabbed the child and rolled with him, sideways and away from the hot, still-popping metal.
The boy squirmed, and Josh pinned the youngster with one hand. “It might explode again. Stay back unless you want to die.” He repeated the command in Malay for good measure.
The boy nodded. Josh let the boy up and watched as he rushed back to his friends, who were all huddled a safe distance away. There was a look of hero worship in the group as the boys gathered around him. The boy was obviously considered a hero for undertaking such a risky business as getting close to the car or possibly being tackled by a strange man, or maybe a combination of the two. The adults were moving out of synch. One woman corralled another group of boys while another was frantically talking on her cell. Near the entrance of the school he could see two others, but all of their attention was focused on the vehicle, and all of them seemed to be moving in a disjointed fashion or not at all.
Josh diverted his attention back to the vehicle. The smoke curled thick and black, and in the distance he could hear the wailing sirens. The canopy of a lone rain tree threw shadows over the shrinking fire in the parking lot, its arthritic trunk standing thick and knotted, a silent silhouette. Across the street a woman clutched the handles of her pedal-powered pushcart, the vibrant pink, yellow and red flowers muted in the gathering smoke. On the main street cars continued to move in a steady stream as if smoke and fire were a normal part of their daily commute.
He scowled. He’d been so close. It had been gut instinct to check the primary schools in Georgetown, suspecting she would hunker down, consider herself safe again for a time. On Sunday, with the help of a local investigator that he’d met on a previous assignment, he’d acquired access to and checked the records of every school in the city that taught in English and that had acquired a foreign female teacher in the past few months.
He’d gone to her apartment just as school would be beginning for the day. While he was fairly certain that they’d located her, he’d hoped to find something that might prove that the woman they’d found in school records was her. He’d jimmied the building’s back door. Fortunately the building was old and unalarmed, but who he suspected was the building’s owner had found him just as he left her apartment. In fact, he had just closed and locked the door, leaving it as he had found it including the small piece of tissue tucked in the latch, meant to alert her to an intruder. It had taken a bit of acting to back out of that situation, but he’d had what he wanted—confirmation that she was the teacher he was seeking and—what he’d thought at the time was an interesting tidbit of information—that she was the owner of a new Naza Sutera.
In the distance, the Penang hills cast a sinister shadow as they cradled one against the other, their dark protrusions muted by distance. His gaze cruised across the bystanders, did a mental calculation of faces, numbers, positions. Nothing.
Josh gritted his teeth over the expletive that wouldn’t change the reality.
She was gone.
Erin was fighting for breath as she rounded the corner and stood out of sight of the school. A lorry swished past belching exhaust as a convoy of motorcyclists followed close behind. It seemed as though they were all fighting for space as a truck jammed in behind the cyclists and the loud red of Coca-Cola overlaid it all as a delivery truck squeezed into the street. A horn honked and a bicyclist swerved as pedestrians weaved their way through the intersection’s traffic snarl.
Her jaw was clenched so tight it ached, and her hand worried the strap of the bag as her eyes strained for a cab to flag. One broke with the traffic and pulled to the curb. She rushed to meet it, throwing open the door and flinging herself inside.
“Focus,” she muttered. She fired off her address in panicked words that she had to repeat when the driver turned around with a puzzled look.
Behind her, flames still punctured the otherwise quiet late-morning sky as sirens wailed and trouble inched closer.
“Daniel,” she whispered. She dashed a tear away and unclenched her hands. She looked out the window as sun glared through the windscreen. A motorcycle pulled up beside the cab, a chopper. The driver’s legs were propped up as he sat back on the low-slung seat. He turned, a dusty-brown beard covering much of his swarthy face, and smiled. The smile was not one of friendship. It was a leer, maybe, or worse. She hit the door lock.
She swallowed and clenched her free hand so tight that her nails dug into her palm. Her throat closed and her eyes burned with unshed tears.
She’d hated to run but she didn’t have a choice. The conversation with Mike Olesk had made that fact clear. A retired police officer who had been a friend of her father’s and a man she hadn’t seen in years, Mike had been the only person she could think of whom she could trust and who might help her sort out her options. The conversation that ensued was one she would never forget, for it had changed her life.
He tapped ashes into a glass ashtray, the Hollywood emblem once sharply emblazoned on it now blurred with ashes. “I know how these things go down. The authorities make promises. But face it, on this one we’re talking local police up against the Anarchists. They don’t stand a chance. If it were the feds it would be a different matter.”
“Why isn’t it?” Her stomach turned over, anticipating what he would say.
“It will be soon. The local authorities will be calling you in for questioning, unless you come forward first. I suspect you maybe have a day, maybe less.”
